


Nice Days

by bestliars



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Aquariums, Florida Panthers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 08:30:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6697438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bestliars/pseuds/bestliars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dylan’s favorite things about working at the aquarium are probably the manatees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nice Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ionthesparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionthesparrow/gifts).



> this is a Nice Story but it is also from the point of view of character w/ anxiety. just a heads up if that would be bad for you.

Right now the best part of Dylan’s job is counting manatees. Since he came back he’s been filling in all over, helping out on all sorts of things, but counting manatees has definitely been the best part.

He isn’t in charge of holding the clicker they use — Erik holds it — and the two of them can just float around and see how many manatees show up. It barely feels like work, but apparently Erik can’t do it on his own, and Dylan isn’t going to complain about spending his afternoons like this.

Normally Dylan wouldn’t think about what the best or worst parts of his job are. He just tries to get through it all and do his best. But when he walked in this morning Willie said they were going to talk later. Before Dylan could start worrying about what that meant Willie went on, saying that it was just to check in about how things were going. He wanted to know what Dylan liked best since he came back, and what he didn’t like, so they could keep that in mind going forward.

The best part is definitely the manatees, but it’s all pretty good. He’s been doing more background stuff, and less interacting with visitors, which he likes. Sometimes he gets stuck with the odd jobs that no one else wants to do, which isn’t great, but it’s better than interacting with visitors a lot.

Since he came back one of his responsibilities has been to clean out the fish tank in Willie’s office. All of the fish are named after people who work at the aquarium, which is sort of cheesy, but cool too. The two fish that built a house together got named after Nick and Kyle. The colorful one is Jonny. The snail that sits in the corner is named Sasha. The explanation for that is that maybe the snail’s quiet and a bit weird, but the rest of the fish need it around to eat algae and keep everything balanced. Dylan thought that seemed sorta mean, but Sasha took it as a compliment, so that’s alright.

Dylan the fish seems really calm. He spends all day swimming around, just being a fish, not worrying about anything. That doesn’t sound like such a bad life. Not that Dylan’s complaining or anything. He’s happy to be back at the aquarium, happy to be getting back into the swing of things.

He spends the morning doing boring office stuff, then after lunch Erik and him go out to count manatees for a while. They come in late in the afternoon, just as Connor’s leading a group through.

The worst thing about not interacting with visitors as much is not working with Connor as much, but it’s not like Dylan ever knows what to say to him anyway. It’s nice this way — getting glimpses of Connor every now and then throughout his day. It feels like a treat, and makes Dylan smile — and then stop and make sure he isn’t smiling weirdly, and then worry that it’s too late and Connor must think he’s so weird, and then he has to take a deep breath and remember it doesn’t matter. He’s going to be fine. 

Even if it might make him worry for a second he still likes seeing Connor.

When Willie finds him at the end of the day, Dylan says that his favorite part of what he’s been doing since he got back is counting manatees, and that his least favorite part has been helping out with marketing. He can’t say that his least favorite part is not working with Connor as much, and marketing is pretty boring.

Willie says that’s good to know, and that he’ll keep this in mind. Dylan worries about being inconvenient, and making things more complicated, and not just being able to handle anything they throw him into. But then Willie says, “It’s good to have you back,” and puts his hand on Dylan’s shoulder and looks him in the eye, and Dylan can really believe him. Or at least it’s enough to make him stop worrying for now.

Dylan goes home, and makes dinner for himself. He watches an episode of _Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown_ , and calls it an early night.

The next day he’s back at the aquarium, bright and early. A lot of the stuff he’s doing is office work, the little things to keep the place running smoothly. Really, Willie should have some sort of assistant — that’s actually what Ek was hired to do, but then Ek had to go and be good at everything and get given other things to do. Dylan doesn’t mind going through the mail and keeping the reception area under control.

He answers the phone, which isn’t so bad. There’s a layer of remove. There’s a script to follow. Which okay, he knows that there’s an actual script for giving tours, but that very often gets derailed, and then he’s stuck with a group of people looking at him, expecting him to be informative and entertaining, while he’s lost searching for the next thing to say. Phone calls mostly stay on track, and he can always put people on hold to stall, or if it gets really bad he can transfer them over to Kyle in the business office. He hasn’t had to do that in weeks.

He’s in the office until lunch, which he eats sitting with Erik out back. They aren’t on manatee counting duty in the afternoon, but there are feedings he can help with, and that keeps him busy until the end of the day. 

He drives home. He talks to his mom on the phone while he’s cooking dinner, watches Netflix while he eats, and a few more episodes before it’s time for bed.

He likes getting up early and going into work. He likes how quiet the aquarium is before the visitors are around, clean and empty. He walks around for a while before settling in at the desk outside of Willie’s office that he could probably start calling his desk. 

It’s a good day at work. Nick wants some help setting up some stations for the field trips they have coming in later. Dylan helps get out the construction paper, and coaxes the copier into making enough coloring sheets. Nick says he might want some more help tomorrow, and Dylan says he can do it. School trips aren’t alway that bad, not when he only has to help the kids, and someone else is dealing with all the teachers and parent volunteers. Working with kids can be alright, but he’s glad he doesn’t have to do it all the time.

He’s still helping Nick when lunch comes around. Kyle comes out of the business office to find them. They invite him to lunch, but he’d rather give them some space and give himself a chance to decompress. He eats alone at his desk, which isn’t sad, because he could be doing other things if he wanted to. It’s just that it’s quiet here and the air conditioning is really good.

After lunch Erik finds him and pulls him out of the office to help count manatees, which is pretty great. It’s a beautiful afternoon. Everything is green, and the air is humid. The ocean feels cool compared to the air. They talk and click the clicker every time another manatee comes around, as the sun gets lower in the sky, reflected on the water.

Eventually they have to head in for the day, but Dylan enjoys it while it lasts. It’s calm out here, peaceful. Just him and Erik and the manatees. Out here it’s easy not to worry. All of the things he usually can’t stop turning over and over in his head feel far away. There’s the water and the sun and the simple task of counting, and nothing for him to stress out about.

He picks up takeout on his way home from work, and eats it in front of the television. He jerks off in the shower before bed. If he dreams he doesn’t remember them in the morning. It’s a good life.

The next day he manages to avoid helping Nick with any kids, but only because he spends the whole day at his desk, or well, at the desk jammed in the space in front of Willie’s office. There’s boring donation tracking work to do. It’s the kind of thing that seems like it should be fully automated, but it isn’t. Even with the software they have there are still parts a human has to do, going in and filling boxes with numbers. It’s boring, but it has to be done. Someone has to do it. There isn’t anything more important that he has to do. He can do this. It’s mindless, and he thinks he might be getting a headache. It’s boring enough that he can think about other things too, but he doesn’t want to think about other things. He doesn’t want to worry. He just wants to do good work and get it over with. There are a lot of numbers to keep track of, and it would be so easy to fuck one of them up, and he doesn’t know if anyone would catch it, not for months maybe, not until it wrecked something — Dylan doesn’t even know what kind of damage one wrong number could do, it might be nothing, but it could be a lot, he just doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know. Knowing wouldn’t make him worry less, worrying is just a thing that he’s going to do. The trick is to make the worry something he can live with. He’s getting better and better at that.

The whole day is pretty miserable, but at the end of the afternoon Willie comes by. There are reasons why he has an office, and things he needs to get done that he doesn’t find as fun as interacting with visitors or sealife. Instead of actually going into his office to do any of those things he leans up against Dylan’s desk, and asks what he’s doing.

And Dylan explains, as best he can, as well as he understands it himself. Willie nods along, looking thoughtful. And when Dylan reaches the end of his explanation Willie says, “It sure sounds like you’re doing good work. I’m proud of you kid. Keep it up.” He claps Dylan on the shoulder, and then goes into his office.

That praise is enough for Dylan’s earlier frustrations to fade away. It’s enough to power him through the rest of the day. By the time he has to head out he’s almost done, with maybe an hour’s worth of work to get through in the morning.

He’s leaving a bit later than he usually would, which winds up meaning that he’s walking out of the building at the same time as Connor. He holds the door open for Connor. He isn’t trying to be chivalrous or anything, just polite. Connor smiles at him. Dylan smiles back, just a little bit.

They walk out to their cars together, and Connor talks about the school children that were around earlier, and how one of the otters was masturbating while Connor was leading them past that enclosure, and how he had to hurry them along before the kids got scared watching an otter perform autofellatio. It’s a good story, and Connor tells it really well, and makes Dylan laugh a lot. 

Talking to Connor is nice, but they can’t actually hang out in the parking lot all night. They stand around talking for a while though, longer than Dylan would have expected. He keeps on giving Connor outs to end the conversation, and Connor keeps coming up with new things to talk about. This keeps happening, long enough that Dylan gets comfortable with it, and can actually enjoy the conversation.

Logan walks past towards his car. “You still haven’t left yet?” Logan shouts over.

“Busy talking to someone cooler than you,” Connor shouts back. Dylan grins, even though he knows he isn’t really cool, Connor is just giving Logan a hard time.

It makes Connor look at his watch though. “Shit. I really have to go let the dog out,” Connor says. And then he leans in to wrap Dylan in a one armed hug that’s over before he can react to it.

“See you around!” Connor says, walking backwards.

Dylan leans against the hood of his car and waves. He wasn’t expecting this, but it was nice.

He’s still grinning as he drives home. He heats up the leftovers from yesterday’s takeout, and watches an episodes of _Parts Unknown_ while he eats.

After dinner he goes for a walk because it’s a nice day, and he spent too much of it cooped up in the air conditioned office. Fresh air is good for him. He goes slowly, and looks at all the different flowers. He doesn’t mind walking alone, but some company might be nice. Maybe he should get a dog, so then he’d have someone to go walking with in the evenings, but then he’d always have to go on a walk, even if he didn’t want to. It might be good for him, to have another set of routines, and someone else to look after. Getting a dog wouldn’t give him anyone to talk to about how beautiful the flowers are, but he’d be a little bit less alone.

He takes the long route walking back to his apartment, and by the time he gets there he’s tired enough to go to sleep, even if it isn’t that late.

The early night means he wakes up before his alarm, and has time make eggs instead of just cereal. It feels sort of special. It isn’t huge, but eating fried eggs on toast is a nice way to start the day off. 

He feels really good driving in, and is energized to get to work. It still takes longer than it should to get through end of the donation stuff in the morning because Jonny leans against his desk and distracts him for almost half an hour. 

Jonny talks about a podcast he listened to recently about dolphins, and how they sleep with half of their brains at a time, which doesn’t sound very restful, but apparently it works alright for them. They sleep with half their brains, which means they always have one eye open, and it isn’t the eye that’s facing out at the rest of the ocean, where anything could be lurking, but the eye that’s facing back at their pod. The dolphins look at each other and trust each other to make sure that nothing terrible’s going to happen. Jonny thinks that’s pretty cool, and Dylan does too. 

Dylan thought that Jonny was waiting to go into a meeting with Willie, but apparently he was just hanging out, cause he doesn’t go into Willie’s office or anything, he just stands around until Sasha drags him off to go do something else.

That’s good, because then Dylan can get down to work, and Jonny and Sasha have work to do too. They all have responsibilities to keep this place running. Dylan finishes the donation stuff, and then sorts through the mail. There are a lot of little things that don’t get done all week, and then on Friday Dylan or someone has to check them all off before they become problems. He makes a note to order more pens because the ones with their information keep getting stolen, and tidies up the rack of brochures for other attractions in the area, and generally gets boring but useful stuff done. 

He stops to eat lunch, sitting with Jonny and Sasha, and Jonny starts talking about dolphins again, because apparently it’s a day for thinking about dolphins even more than usual. Sasha doesn’t talk about much, but has a way at interrupting at the perfect moment to stop weird tangents and keep the volume reasonable. It is an entertaining meal.

When he was sorting through the stuff on his desk he found some things that Willie needs to sign, or at least see, so after lunch he makes it his mission to track Willie down. He’ll start with the obvious places. Willie isn’t his office, it’s just the fish in there. Kyle’s the only one in the business office, glaring at the computer. Dylan isn’t going to interrupt him. He keeps looking. Nick’s in the classroom with a school group. Connor’s leading a tour, but when he spots Dylan he smiles. Dylan smiles back, and kind of half waves, then leaves really fast before he can get embarrassed.

Eventually he finds Willie out back, rearranging the tables they have set up. There’s definitely someone else who should be doing this, but of course Willie is doing it himself. Dylan sets down the papers and grabs the other end of the table to help. They get things put the way Willie wants it, and then sit down at one of the tables to go through the papers Dylan found.

“You're doing really good kid,” Willie says. “It's really great that you’re stepping up and taking care of this kind of stuff. I’m really proud.”

Dylan looks down at his shoes, shrugs. “It’s really nothing.”

“Nah, I really appreciate it.”

Willie goes through the papers, signing the things that need to get signed, okaying the order for more pens and a few other things. Getting Willie to do paperwork when there’s more interesting hands on stuff he could take care of can be a struggle, but cornering him like this seems to work out alright. Dylan will have to remember this for the future. There are a few documents that Willie has to read through. “I’ll leave this on your desk when I’m done?” Willie says.

“Yeah. That’s good.” Dylan says. He doesn’t say anything about whether or not it’s actually his desk.

“Now go have a fun weekend kid. I’ll see you Monday.”

Dylan nods, and gets up. He goes back inside, and does stuff at his desk until the end of the day.

It’s a Friday night, and it’s not like he’s tired from doing paper work all day, so when Erik says he’s coming over, Dylan doesn’t fight it.

Erik can’t actually cook, but he likes to grill, and there’s grocery store fruit salad. They sit in the plastic chairs in Erik’s backyard, eat their burgers and hang out. It’s very chill. 

After they’re done with the part of making dinner that involves setting things on fire they get high. Dylan used to be paranoid that weed would make him paranoid, but it doesn’t. It’s just nice, making things seem slower and less important. It makes it easier to say some things Dylan usually wouldn’t acknowledge.

“I talked to Connor for like twenty minutes in the parking lot yesterday,” Dylan says. He doesn’t know why he’s bringing this up.

“Oh _really?_ ” Erik leans into the word, and into Dylan’s personal space. What he’s suggesting is very clear.

Dylan is stoned enough not to care if he’s blushing. It really isn’t anything. He just likes talking to Connor. 

“You know you could, like, make plans to talk to Connor outside of work, for like, more than twenty minutes, somewhere other than the parking lot. You could like, talk, and eat dinner.”

Dylan shrugs. “Yeah maybe.” He guesses he could do that. It might even be good. But he could also not do that, and not have to worry about it, which would definitely not be bad. It’s something to think about maybe, but not right now.

Erik goes inside for a minute, and comes back with a half eaten bag of Oreos that they finish together. Erik eats more than half of them because he’s just putting the cookies in his mouth one after another. Dylan doesn’t do that. He needs to take them apart, carefully, and eat the plain half first, and then the better side with the frosting. It’s slow, but it’s worth it.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could smoke and then hang out with the manatees?” Erik asks.

Dylan nods. They’ve had this conversation at least ten times. “It’d be cool, but there’s work to do. You’ve got the clicker.”

“I could give you the clicker,” Erik says.

“No, you couldn’t. I wouldn’t take it.”

“It just. Like. Clicks. You’d be fine.”

Dylan shrugs. “Yeah, maybe. But I’m still not gonna take that clicker. You have to do it yourself.”

Erik shakes his head, but doesn’t press the issue.

They don’t do anything else, just hang out and talk. It isn’t all that different from work, except Dylan doesn’t get high at work, and like, they could be playing video games if they wanted, or do something, but they don’t want to. They just want to sit here. It’s nice.

It gets late, and he goes home. It’s the weekend, so he can sleep in. Not everyone gets their days off over the weekend, but Dylan mostly has since he’s gotten back and started doing more administrative stuff. He doesn't have to do anything, but he also has nothing he has to do. Well, he should do some laundry, but that's not much of a serious responsibility. That's probably good, but it means he has to entertain himself. He reads for a while. He thinks about getting groceries. He even makes a list so it’ll be easier tomorrow. He doesn’t really like grocery stores.

He thinks about going to the movies, but winds up watching more episodes of _Parts Unknown_ instead, staying up later than he really should. He might not need to wake up early tomorrow, but Monday morning’s still waiting for him. It’s not like _Parts Unknown_ is particularly riveting, he just isn’t all that tired. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to go to sleep.

He stays up and stays up, tells himself one more episode three times, before finally going to bed. By the time the credits roll for the last time he’s half asleep, can barely keep his eyes open, and is proud of himself for making it from the couch to his bed. 

He sleeps in again, and feels groggy when he wakes up. Lying here won't make him feel any better. It's tempting, but he knows better than to spend all day in bed and expecting it to solve anything. He gets dressed, finds his sunglasses, and get out of the house.

He stops at a coffee shop on the way to the grocery store, and instead of just taking his drink to go and getting on with his errands, he decides to sit there for a while. He drinks his coffee and looks through the newspaper that someone had left on the table. None of the movie reviews sound like something he wants to see. His horoscope doesn’t make any sense, but not in an ominous way. It doesn’t sound concerning, just unclear, which he can live with without worrying.

Getting groceries is fine. It’s boring, but that’s alright. He feels good about getting it done. He isn’t much of a cook, and since he’s just feeding himself he doesn’t even try that hard, but it’s better to have the freezer full of stuff he can eat. He puts away the groceries, and makes himself dinner, and watches TV. He’s kind of bored, but not actually unhappy.

Maybe he’ll get fish tank for at home. It wouldn’t be very impressive, not compared to everything he sees at work, but it might be nice. Just something small. He thinks he’d like the company.

Sunday night means getting ready for the work week, so he tries to turn in earlier and get more sleep, but it doesn’t turn out well. The room’s cool with air conditioning, his sheets feel soft, and the comforter is weighing him down just right, but his brain won’t get quiet enough to sleep. He tries, but it keeps spinning, not into anything horrible, just loud, persistent, which isn’t what he needs right now. He needs to get some real sleep, where he’s actually unconscious, not just lying here with his eyes closed.

He’s been working at taking better care of himself when he feels bad. He doesn’t know how well he’s doing, but he’s trying. One thing he’s been doing is listening to classical music when he can’t sleep. Classical music is supposed to be calming, and he would like to be more calm. He can’t bring himself to search out any sort of new age relaxation sounds, or like, rain noises, but he’s trying classical music. Lately he’s been listening to classical violin music. There’s a playlist on Spotify called “Classical Violin,” and Dylan doesn’t know anything about classical music, but he’s been enjoying trying to fall asleep to this stuff. The violin is a beautiful instrument.

Connor plays the violin. That isn’t why Dylan picked it, he just thinks it’s a nice sounding instrument. But sometimes he thinks about how Connor plays the violin, and sometimes thinks about what it would be like if Connor played the violin for him. The words that pop into his head are “dreamy” and “romantic” and “unlikely.” Thinking about Connor playing the violin isn’t exactly calming, but it is nice, and it does help, so he isn’t going to stop doing. At least not right now.

He does fall asleep eventually. He wonders if the violin music does anything to change his dreams, but so far he hasn’t noticed any difference. It seems like the same mix of vague worry and sunshine. He wakes up in the morning, and the music is still going, beautiful sounds behind the clamour of his alarm clock.

Going to work on Monday morning is a lot more awesome than it should be. Dylan’s tired, but he likes having somewhere to go. He likes having things to take care of. He feeds the fish in Willie’s office, and goes through the new mail, sitting at his desk and sorting it into piles. He helps Nick with a project getting ready for this week’s school groups. At lunch he sits between Kyle and Sasha, which is probably the quietest place he could be, and much better than if he was on the other side of the table, where Tro almost elbowed Ek in the face. 

In the afternoon he and Erik are on manatee duty. They float, and Erik holds the clicker, and it is a good day. Dylan has been having more good days than bad lately. He’s starting to get used to having so many good days in a row. 

 

 

A couple weeks later there’s a cookout. There isn’t an occasion, or anything special they’re celebrating, they just like each other, and like doing things like this. Dylan really likes his job. The day to day parts are alright, and he thinks he’s pretty lucky to have wound up here with these people.

There’s a lot of good food. Erik is “helping” Willie at the grill. Nick said he was going to bring some sort of salad with Jello in it, which sounds like it could be good, or maybe not, but Nick seemed pretty excited. Ek made cookies. Dylan just brought chips. He felt a little bit bad not making something himself, but when he showed up Meg was really excited, and said that it was a perfect addition. She might have been trying to be nice, but people are still going to eat them. They’re going to be appreciated. He doesn’t need to worry.

The sun’s so bright it almost hurts, and the air is humid. Dylan has his sunglasses, but it isn’t enough. He almost feels blinded. He likes it. He isn’t paying attention — he closes his eyes for one second, and when he opens them, Connor’s standing next to him, smiling.

Dylan smiles back.

“Have you met Cam?” Connor asks. Dylan shakes his head.

“He’s the coolest dog you’re ever gonna meet,” Connor says.

Dylan crouches down so the dog can lick his hand. Cam is very cute, floppy ears and a goofy face.

“I think she likes you,” Connor says. “She has good taste.”

Dylan knows he doesn’t know how to take a compliment, so he doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t look up. He just keeps rubbing Cam’s ears. “He’s a really cool dog. I miss having a dog around.”

“You should come on a walk with us sometime,” Connor says.

“Yeah?” That sounds nice. Dylan stands up so he can talk to Connor can talk better. 

“Or actually, I was wondering, would you like to go out for dinner? With me?” Connor asks.

Dylan can’t breath. He wants. He worries. He doesn’t know what to say. “Dinner?”

“As like, a dinner date? Or just friends if you want, but we don’t hang out enough, and that’s a bummer.”

Dylan agrees so much. He wants this more than he’s comfortable admitting, enough that his words feel tangled, but he can’t leave Connor hanging. “I think we could — a dinner date sounds nice.”

“Awesome,” Connor says. His smile is positively blinding. He looks so excited just for them to get dinner together. Dylan doesn’t really get it, but he’s happy too. It should be fun. Probably. He won’t let himself start worrying about it yet.

They can’t just make eyes at each other all afternoon. Willie’s shouting that it’s time to come eat, and Dylan promised he’d play frisbee later. There’s work on Monday. There’s a whole lot of stuff coming up. They’re going to go get dinner sometime. It’s going to be good. Dylan doesn’t worry about the future nearly as much as he used to.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to A, B, & C, for encouraging this and having nice alphabetical initials. I don't know anything about aquariums, so thanks to A for Knowing Things about aquariums, and about Florida. The story about otters is hers. This is all kind of her fault. Thanks to B for beta reading, & being my sadness buddy. Thanks to C for telling me to stop talking and write the last two sentences than I needed to write.


End file.
